British Government Since 1970

I am not sure if it was the recent New Year’s message from Tony Blair telling us how great everything is (despite the tough choices) or Michael Howard’s ‘too much control from the centre’ message that got me to thinking about British Prime Minister’s in my lifetime and, one evening, the question came up, ‘can you name all the PMs since you were born’?

Now, I did manage to get it correct, although I got the order of those when I was little, slightly wrong. The first PM I remember is James Callaghan (and with it I have memories of power cuts) but of course there were some before him and I managed to name them.

While I was coming up with the list I did, for a moment, forget John Major and was later surprised to learn that he came to the job in 1990 and was defeated by Tony Blair in 1997. He had more-or-less seven years in the top job. That came as a bit of a shock.

When I think back to my time as a student, Margaret Thatcher was in power for a great deal of it. I have mental images of the Iron Lady ruling her over-whelming parliamentary majority with nothing but a handbag to beat her party. What shocked me, as I was checking the list of Prime Ministers I had come up with, with was that Tony Blair’s New Labour has had a bigger majority in The House than either of Mrs Thatcher’s governments.

So, for my own record, British Prime Minister’s since my birth (the year is the year they came to the job):

  • 1970: Edward Heath (Conservative)
  • 1974: Harold Wilson (Labour)
  • 1976: James Callaghan (Labour)
  • 1979: Margaret Thatcher (Conservative)
  • 1990: John Major (Conservative)
  • 1997: Tony Blair (Labour)

(Full list of British Prime Ministers since 1721 at Burke’s Peerage)

and those majorities at recent elections:

  • 03 May 1979: Conservative majority of 43
  • 09 June 1983: Conservative majority of 144
  • 11 June 1987: Conservative majority of 102
  • 09 April 1992: Conservative majority of 21
  • 01 May 1997: Labour majority of 179
  • 07 June 2001: Labour majority of 167

There seems to be some dispute about the June 2001 majority. Some figures put it at 166. I use the election results pages at Keele for these numbers.

On this day…